I stood in the chaos that was once my bedroom, stared around at the complete lack of visible floor space and cried "I can't believe this is what I am!" This dramatic outburst of self misery that would normally be met with a fall to the knees, a sorrowful piano chord and a rain storm in any half-successful blockbuster film, was actually met with my house mate sticking her head round the door and chuckling at my tragic situation.
I'm sure some people have systems and colour codes and probably an itinerary when it comes to packing, but I do not. I make a big mess and then spend the next few hours trying to battle it into any form of container, may it be a suitcase, a Sainsbury's bag or a left wellington boot (to clarify the boot in question had been left behind, I can't remember if it was in fact the boot for the left foot). If this situation isn't stressful enough, you then find yourself surrounded by your now contained belongings and realise that this mismatch pile of stuff is everything you own. In 23 years I seem to have collected A LOT of stuff and actually, I found it rather depressing. I kept thinking that if there was a freak natural disaster and I was left frozen in the state I was then in, and some explorer thousands of years from now found me and had to make some conclusion about who I was based on the stuff that surrounded me…I would be irritatingly generic. Apart possibly from the large, metal, guitar-playing ant my friends bought me on my 18th birthday that was then unceremoniously shoved in an old-lady-wheelie shopping bag, I had clothes, shoes, jewellery, some books and my one file of organisation and then just stuff. So much stuff that there is no other word for it. I can't even remember what it was. It was stuff, and if I can't remember what it is it probably isn't that special. Our explorer friend would probably look at it with a raised eye-brow and declare me an insignificant find.
The thing I find the most interesting about moving house is the believe that it will solve all our problems. The phrase "once we've moved" was said so many times in our post-move week and more significantly, we had so much faith in those three little words. Dieting, detoxing, budgeting, working and organising were all things that we unquestionably believed would happen better "once we've moved." I grant you it makes sense in it in that the stress and mental capacity required for moving takes up so much of your brain that even thinking about anything else is a huge effort. But it's like New Year. It's the fresh new start, the beginning of a new chapter, that's what excites us. It's the possibility that by simply moving yourself to a new place you are wiping the slate clean and starting again. The idea of taking a new route to work and putting all your kitchen utensils in their new places is exciting, it's fun. You try and make your mark on a place, make it yours. You plan where you're going to put things, what bed sheets would look best; you have to make it feel like home. Then, just as by February you have slipped back into old habits, by the end of your first week in your new place the novelty begins to wear off. All of that stuff, the stuff that you wrapped up in bin bags and shoved into wellingtons, you brought all of it with you. Soon your fresh and hopeful new room is full of everything you have always had. You are actually the same person after all.
This is all sounding really depressing and originally I thought it was, but now I wonder if perhaps it's not the building and the new and snazzy living room that makes somewhere a home, maybe it is the stuff. The stuff that I feel makes me an insignificant find is actually what I use to make myself a home. Yes it's probably due to our consumerism driven lives blah blah blah and it may be generic but it's the stuff that I choose to keep and carry with me and that does define who I am, to an extent. Mr Future Explorer might not think me anyone special, but that's because he doesn't know all the things about me that I can't pack. Our friends, family, memories and adventures also define who we are. It just so happens they are a lot more difficult to fit into a wellington boot.
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